Dublin Institute of Technology
ARROW@DIT
Media
School of Surveying and Construction Management
2016-7
Generation Rent Needs Grown-Up Housing
Guidelines Now
Lorcan Sirr
Dublin Institute of Technology, [email protected]
Follow this and additional works at: http://arrow.dit.ie/beschrecmed
Part of the Urban, Community and Regional Planning Commons, and the Urban Studies and
Planning Commons
Recommended Citation
Sirr, L. (2016) Generation rent needs grown up housing guidelines now. The Sunday Times 03.07.2016.
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the School of
Surveying and Construction Management at ARROW@DIT. It has been
accepted for inclusion in Media by an authorized administrator of
ARROW@DIT. For more information, please contact
[email protected], [email protected].
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons AttributionNoncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License
03.07.16 / 9
CREDIT
Up the
workers
In a narrow, dry urban border,
go for hardworking mainly upright
plants for a long summer display
I’
m continually in search of
uncomplaining
and
hardworking summer plants for my
front garden. My patch is like a lot
of urban ones: the soil is poor and
comparatively dry and the borders, at 150cm wide, are not very
accommodating. Although that may seem
a generous width, it’s a bit narrow to easily
layer plants two and three deep, which is
what you need if you are keen on a proper
flowery confection look.
So, if your border is narrower than
3 metres, you need to search for plants that
are upright and slim, those that are happy
to interweave with others and those with a
compact habit. The danger with compact
plants, however, is that they often look like
blobs. That’s fine, I suppose, if you’re going
for a scatter of cupcakes look, but not if
you’re trying for a wild-ish and convivial
mood, which is what I’m after.
So, use compact plants at the front of the
border, but not in a uniform row: intersperse them with taller ones, for a more
natural appearance.
Also, I’m not willing to wage battle with
slugs, snails or other pests, unless it’s
to protect something I want to eat. Therefore, everything ornamental here has to be
critter-proof. It also has to be diseaseproof, long-flowering and to require minimal staking.
A word on preventing plants from toppling: I don’t want to be tying myself in
knots with bits of string or poking my eye
out with bamboo canes. So, half-moon
supports (made from steel rods) are almost
the only reinforcing devices that I use. It
takes only a minute to lift up the foliage,
shove the legs of the support into the
ground and gently arrange the plant so that
it is invisibly held in place. The trick with
all supports is to prop your plants up before
they flop.
Much better, though, is a tall plant that
JANE
POWERS
GARDENS
requires no staking, and there are many
that are perfect for urban gardens with
limited space. One of my favourites is
purple toadflax (Linaria purpurea), an
Italian wildflower that grows to between
60cm and 1m and bears thin and lithe
spikes of tiny purple snapdragon flowers.
It usually arrives uninvited in gardens,
so is often considered a weed. I love it,
though, as it flowers for five or six months,
and is a great hit with bumblebees.
The cultivar, ‘Canon Went’, has shellpink flowers, wine-toned stems and
greyish leaves.
The purple woodland sages (Salvia
nemorosa and its relatives) also bear
upright spikes of flowers, shorter,
denser and more static than those of
toadflax. There are loads of different varieties, including ‘Ostfriesland’, ‘Caradonna’
(both about 50cm) and ‘Mainacht’ (up
to a metre).
Cut back the first lot of flowers when
they finish (within the next few weeks),
water the plants well, give a liquid feed,
and you’ll get another lesser flush later.
This regime goes for all perennials that
finish blooming around now. Feeding and
watering is essential after cutting back: the
act of flowering is exhausting, and the
soil at the base of plants in this crowded
season is often bone dry, especially in
urban gardens.
Foxgloves and verbascums, both perennialsandbiennials(whichImentionedtwo
weeks ago), work well in narrow borders.
Verbascum chaixii ‘Album’ has no established common name, but its cumbersome
handle is worth trying to remember.
It bears multiple, metre-tall spires of
white flowers with curious, velvety, papal
purple stamens.
As with all the plants I’ve recommended
so far (and those to come) it is brilliant for
bees. Also in the tall and thin category is
the purple-topped, square-stemmed
Verbena bonariensis, which I mentioned
last week and on many other occasions, as
it is so versatile.
Knautia macedonica is a plant that
weaves companionably among its
neighbours, slinging its wiry stems and
claret-coloured pin cushions here and
there so that they seem to bob in the air.
Thistle relative Cirsium rivulare ‘Atropurpureum’ bears flowers the same colour.
The stiff stems don’t allow them to
bounce, but they are held a metre or more
high, so they do a good job of floating above
the rest of the fray.
Other such floaters include opium
poppies and cornflowers, both annuals.
With the latter, be sure to get tall varieties
such as ‘Blue Boy’, ‘Blue Ball’, ‘Black Ball’,
‘Red Ball’, ‘Pinkie’ and ‘Snowman’. Tall
cornflowers may need staking with canes,
as half-moon hoops can be too heavy for
them. It’s too late to sow opium poppies or
cornflowers for this year, but you can start
them in August or September for next year.
The poppies will reliably self-seed
year after year, while the cornflowers
may or may not, depending on your
garden’s conditions.
Hardy geraniums are grand, serviceable
The purpleflowered Verbena
bonariensis is
a great addition
to a narrow border,
along with,
from top right,
Linaria purpurea,
Knautia
macedonica and
Verbascum chaixii
plants for an urban garden. ‘Rozanne’,
with pale-eyed, violet-mauve flowers, is
one of the best, blooming all summer. It’s
30 cm to 60 cm tall and can spread to cover
a metre over the season, so give it space. If
it gets too sprawly,don’tbe afraid to give all
or part of it an unceremonious haircut.
I’ve been doing this for years, and it
recovers in a week or two. ‘Anne
Thomson’, with its mad, shocking pink
flowers, is another candidate.
A final plant for an urban patch (and any
dry-ish garden) is one with a common
name that is as unlovely as its botanical
one: Mexican fleabane or Erigeron karvinskianus. It sends out a continual froth of
tiny daisies that are just perfect for softening the edge of a bed or growing in pots.
Grow for it
Prop before they drop
Half-hoop plant supports
are available from many
garden suppliers, including
johnstowngardencentre.ie,
mulhallobelisks.com and
thegardenshop.ie. Spirals
for taller plants such as
delphiniums are available
from howbertandmays.ie.
Ornate domed and flared
supports can be found at
quickcrop.ie.
Blarney in Bloom
Next Sunday sees Blarney
Castle Gardens’ annual
summer fair in aid of Irish
Guide Dogs for the Blind.
There will be garden stalls, a
dog show and talks by
Susan Turner, of
Ballymaloe, Hester Forde, of
Coosheen Garden, Madeline
McKeever, of Brown
Envelope Seeds. Admission:
€5 blarneycastle.ie
Jane digs . . .
The South African Diascia
personata: one of the best
plants for a summer
border, but hard to find.
Write down the name and
if you see the plant for sale,
grab it. The small salmoncoloured blooms are held
on rigid stems, about
90cm tall.
[email protected]
Generation rent needs grown-up housing guidelines now
Big strides have been made in regulating the booming
private rented sector, but there’s still plenty of work to do
T
he private rented sector in
Ireland accommodates
705,000 people in 324,000
tenancies — in properties
owned by 172,000 registered
landlords. In the past 18 months
alone there has been an increase of
12,000 registered landlords.
Although still regarded as a
second-class tenure, the private
rented sector is a significant part of
the housing system. It is set to
become not merely a stopgap for
students, immigrants and the
unemployed, but also a
mainstream tenure for large
numbers of highly educated and
well-paid but employmentuncertain people. Regulation and
maturation of this sector is
therefore critical.
Deasy’s Act of 1860 put the
relationship between a landlord
and tenant on a contractual basis,
but it wasn’t until 2004 that any
significant regulation of the sector
emerged in the form of the
Residential Tenancies Act. Before
the 2004 act landlords could
terminate tenancies without
reason, or with short notice
periods, and demand whatever
rent they wanted. The act defined
what rent was to be charged
(“market rent”) and it gave tenants
certain rights over lease length and
notice periods. It still gave
landlords the upper hand when it
came to reasons for eviction — use
by a family member, and so on.
Around the same time the
Private Residential Tenancies Board
LORCAN
SIRR
ON THE
HOME FRONT
— now the Residential Tenancies
Board (RTB) — was established to
act as a register for tenancies and
landlords, and also as a dispute
resolution mechanism. Previously,
landlords and tenants had to go to
court to resolve their differences.
Over the years, an increasing
number of landlords have
registered with the board, as they
are legally obliged to do, and it has
resolved thousands of disputes.
About 1%-2% of all tenancies end
up in dispute, and it takes about
two to three months to resolve
them using the RTB, or half that if
the free mediation service is used.
Until 2015, the largest cause of
dispute was the withholding of
deposits — it is now rent arrears.
Disputes involving deposits could
have been resolved by introducing
a deposit protection scheme,
where tenants’ deposits are held by
an independent body and returned
when both parties agree. Ireland is
now belatedly implementing such
a scheme, years behind other
countries, and it should be
operational later year. Credit here
should go to former minister Alan
Kelly in legislating for it.
The Residential Tenancies
(Amendment) Act 2015 has moved
things on again. Approved housing
bodies have come under the remit
of the RTB. There is a new 24month period between rent
reviews with a commensurate 90
days’ notice period for serving
such notices. This gives an effective
period of 27 months between rent
changes but it will revert to 12month reviews after four years.
The notice of rent review is now
more specific. It must state the new
rent and the date it comes into
effect; be signed by the landlord or
their agent; include a statement to
say disputes over this new rent
must be referred to the RTB before
As renting a home becomes more than a stopgap measure, new rules are needed to protect tenants
it comes into effect or within
28 days after; and include proof of
the market rent.
Notice periods for terminations
of leases have also been extended
to a maximum of 224 days from a
landlord, or 112 days from a tenant.
On the day a tenant has to leave
they have the full 24 hours of that
day. Again, this is all positive as it
provides more certainty for both
landlords and tenants, although we
are not sure what will happen after
the rent-freeze period expires.
Legislators still have not come to
terms with proper security of
tenure, such as removing use by a
family member as a reason for
eviction, for example.
Given the rise of the private
rented sector, security of tenure
and rent certainty will no longer be
something that can be put off.
Maturing the sector will mean
fundamental change and
disagreement along the way, but it
is vital that the sector becomes
more akin to the commercial
property investment market where
occupied properties are worth
more than vacant ones, and
the longer the lease, the more
valuable the asset.